A player, manager, owner, commissioner and unsurpassed visionary, Rube Foster was one of baseball’s greatest renaissance men. In his youth, Foster was a star pitcher of the deadball era. Later, as owner-manager of the Chicago American Giants, the burly Texan instilled in his players the daring, aggressive, yet disciplined, style of play for which the Negro leagues became famous. Saying, “I cannot let such talent go to waste a day longer,” Foster founded the first successful Negro league, the Negro National League, in 1920. It flourished until the Great Depression, and demonstrated that baseball with African-American ownership and players could succeed.